Monday, November 28, 2005

Another forgotten band: The Dambuilders

My four regular readers know I have a thing for obscure power pop. Here's another band in that mold: The Dambuilders. Their big hit was Shrine in '94. You remember right? She doesn't speak much English but she tells me all her favorite bands...

Well, sometimes a big hit like that, especially a tongue-in-cheek one, can doom your career. (Just ask The Knack.) The Dambuilders got lost in the post-Nirvana indie rock feeding frenzy, tagged as a one-hit-wonder novelty act despite producing two more excellent albums that ended up in the dollar bin. A sad end to one of the only indie pop bands to successfully employ a violin.

There's not all that much info about the band online. It seems the members have all had projects here and there (the drummer was in Guided by Voices for a while). I used to have a great article about them that I cut out of their hometown paper The Boston Phoenix in '94 but I don't know what became of it. Their major-label releases are all out of print but readily available online for $2.50 (as in a penny plus shipping). So anyhow, here are the songs: